


Then And Now Are Two Different Things

by LoosenYourCorset



Category: Marvel
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-22
Updated: 2013-04-22
Packaged: 2017-12-09 05:24:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/770492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoosenYourCorset/pseuds/LoosenYourCorset
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve and Bucky are exactly the same as they’ve always been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Then And Now Are Two Different Things

Anyone who took a walk through the orphanage could tell, Steve practically belonged to Bucky. A person casually strolling through, looking at young boys to adopt, could ask any one of the other kids about the back room and they would tell them exactly who lived in it. Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes. Steve had to stay in there due to sickness (so as not to get the other boys sick) and Bucky had requested to stay with him. That was four years ago, though, when Steve was 6 and Bucky was 8. Even then they’d been friends, even when Steve was too underaged to understand his infatuation with the other boy.

 

At night when it was too cold for Steve to sleep in his own bed, he’d cross the room to get into Bucky’s. If Bucky was asleep Steve would wake him up, then whine about being cold and needing to jump in with him. Bucky never minded, even when he was too tired for bed-sharing. He just pushed back his covers, what little he had, and allowed Steve to clamber into bed with him. Because that’s just what Bucky did. Whatever Steve wanted, whatever he needed, Bucky was there for him.

 

That was the past and this was the future, and Steve and Bucky were still the exact same way. Only now they lived in separate rooms. In Stark Tower, where Tony Stark had graciously allowed all of the Avengers to live and stay, Steve had been living on a floor by himself. He’d asked for that floor because it was closest to the private gym that Tony had built for him. Steve was a nice person, though, and had told the others that they could use the gym when and if they ever wanted to.

 

When Bucky had been found and brought to New York, beaten and battered and generally rude to everyone on the team, Steve had requested Bucky’s room to be built in the Tower. On his floor. Right down the hall. Tony had objected but Steve could usually get him to do whatever he wanted; batting his eyelashes was something Steve had grown accustomed to doing. People would do what the golden boy told them to if he could flatter them enough. Plus, he knew when people were attracted to him. And even though he hated using his looks as a form of persuasion, sometimes it just had to be done.

 

Anyway, Steve had learned that one of the very, very few things about New York that hadn’t changed was the weather. The summers were still hot and the winters were still cold. With the serum running through his veins he didn’t need Bucky’s arms to keep him warm anymore. That didn’t stop him from quietly padding his way down the hall and slipping into Bucky’s room almost unnoticed when the nights hit freezing temperatures.

 

Bucky did the same thing he did when they were children. Whether asleep or awake, Steve would walk over to the bed and push him and Bucky would turn back the covers for him. Bucky almost couldn’t get his arms around him anymore, but he always tried. He always made sure that Steve felt comfortable and safe with him.

 

Sometimes, on nights when his body was restless, Steve didn’t fall asleep right away. That’s when Bucky would bring a hand up to rub the hair on Steve’s forehead back. Over and over again he did it, the way he did when they were kids, and it never failed to put Steve to sleep. And when Bucky finally noticed that Steve’s breathing was even and slow, he’d wrap his arms around him and kiss his cheek, pulling the covers all the way up and closing his eyes. (There was no shortage of blankets in the Tower, either, and Bucky liked that.)

 

It wasn’t the 1930s, and they were not little anymore. Steve didn’t snore the way he used to because of his asthma, and Bucky didn’t lay awake all night listening to his messed up breathing and hoping that each breath he took would not be his last. Instead, they both slept soundly. They were both safe from Nazis now, from starving or freezing to death. But even in the Tower and not in the orphanage, even in their mid twenties, Steve still belonged to Bucky in ways they still couldn’t comprehend.


End file.
